Work

Matt Stein is a designer, developer, and wordsmith interested in clear communication and rigorous care for details. Curious, collaborative, and self-motivated.

Skills

Writing &
Organization

Clear goals, expectations, intentions, and communication drive most of what I do. Writing things down has helped me maintain a sense of order and build trust with clients relying on my mostly-solo operation. I value succinctness, precision, and earnestness and want to share knowledge and encourage conversation—not to be a gatekeeper. I love Markdown, Obsidian, and Notion.

Design &
Development

I have a formal Graphic Design background that influences my development experience with PHP and JavaScript using frameworks like Laravel, Yii, Vue, or React. I’ve pawed at Golang, Python, Perl, Node.js and shell scripting along the way. I often work with Figma, VS Code, and PhpStorm. Currently enjoying Astro.

Teaching

Once I grasp something, I can usually help others understand it. I appreciate the challenge and nuance in teaching and enjoy helping others learn, which is an exercise in listening to another’s point of view and approaching it from my own. I’ve been consistently successful when I’ve put sufficient energy into it.

Other Random Things

A lot of my strengths come from a breadth of interest. I’m naturally curious and enjoy product naming, identity development, hosting and devops, performance audits, SEO, project management, workshops, motion graphics, diagramming, illustration, photography, video production, and other domains where I’m never an expert but can often make modest contributions or collaborate with specialists.

Employment History

Adjacent October 2022–present

Owner

Bend OR

  • CMS-based development and training
  • Static site development
  • Accessibility remediation
  • Documentation improvement
  • Marketing and writing audits
  • Technical research and troubleshooting
  • Ad hoc project management
  • General consulting

Pixel & Tonic January 2020–July 2022

Technical Writer

Austin TX, Bend OR

  • Maintained and improved Craft CMS product documentation and support materials.
  • Helped maintain documentation systems: custom VuePress theme, documentation generator source code, Buddy and GitHub Actions pipelines, etc.
  • Improved internal documentation and helped write and organize meeting notes and Linear tasks.
  • Published the Craft Link List newsletter.
  • Helped conduct and document private project audits.
  • Gave private product demos for potential customers and developers.
  • Contributed to and helped maintain several websites and example projects.
  • Provided project management support.
  • Provided a limited amount of GitHub, Discord, and ticket-based end user support.
  • MC’d online Dot All 2021 annual conference.

Working Concept July 2009–2021

Owner

Seattle WA, Lake Mary FL, Austin TX, Bend OR

  • Planned, designed, developed, and maintained web apps and CMS-based websites for a variety of regular clients.
  • Offered limited hosting and maintenance contracts.
  • Provided project consulting and assistance to other web agencies.
  • Wrote and maintained publicly-available plugins for ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS.
  • Helped marketing, design, and technical teams plan and execute multi-disciplinary web projects.

School of Visual Concepts 2009–2011

Instructor

Seattle WA

  • Taught Adobe Flash CS5 Levels 1 & 2, Intermediate Flash CS4, and Intro to HTML and CSS.
  • Developed and maintained the custom web app the school used for managing class registrations, payments, and website content.

IF/THEN October 2006–July 2009

Designer

Seattle WA

  • Developed Flash, HTML+CSS, and ExpressionEngine-driven web projects.
  • Helped with design and motion graphic production work.
  • Helped coordinate studio efforts and improve internal processes.

Education

Rochester Institute of Technology 2002–2006

BFA, Graphic Design

Rochester NY

Interested in talking?

Send me an email or schedule a chat!

Don’t have a role in mind?

Here’s one I made up!